


I Saw Her Today At A Reception

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M, Five Times, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-26
Updated: 2006-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:52:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times House wanted Cuddy but didn't tell her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Saw Her Today At A Reception

_when she said no_

"And, whoomph, over the handlebars and into a bush," the kid's saying as House palpates his pedal pulse. He wiggles his toes and winces. "Aren't you going to say, 'Better the bike than you' or something?" he asks.

"Nope," House says matter-of-factly. It's been a good day, and even suicidal clinic patients can't dent his mood. "Does this hurt?"

"Like a bitch."

"Great. Then I'm going to do it again." House hands the kid a dish, the clinic's version of an airsick bag. It's going to be necessary within the next five minutes or so, and House makes a bet with himself that he'll be out of the exam room with seconds to spare.

"Is it broken? 'Cause if it's broken my coach is gonna be pissed. I was supposed to start on Saturday. What are you testing for?"

"Brain damage," House says, pressing the kid's foot flat against his palm and checking the range of motion.

"In my foot?"

"No, in your head," House says. "Your chart lists some very alarming symptoms."

"Oh, man," the kid says, his face shock-pale and sweaty. "Oh, man. I was wearing a helmet. I had the rollbars put on--"

"Rollbars protect gas tanks, not tibias, you idiot," House says. "Frontal lobe damage would explain why you can't link cause and effect."

"But--"

"That was a 1996 Ducati Monster S4R, which you drove at sixty miles an hour in Princeton in October, an hour after a rain storm, and you're stunned and amazed that you crashed."

The kid stares at him blankly, and he's starting to look green around the gills. House feels bad for the kid's motorcycle, which must've been a real beauty before it got painted with flames and butchered with rollbars. "Don't worry, amputation wouldn't slow you down in the least," he says. "You won't be able to use the back brake, but that hasn't been important to you yet, so no big loss. And," he adds, standing up and grabbing his cane from where he hooked it over the door handle when he came in, "the best accessory is one that doesn't let you down just because you hit a tree with it."

House tucks the chart under his right arm, steps out, and closes the door behind him, counting down: _three, two, one_. Right on cue he hears the kid retching. Perfect timing.

"Clean up on aisle three," he calls out cheerfully, and heads for the admit desk. From the corner of his eye, he sees Cuddy stalking in the same direction. His instinct is to change course, but a quick review of the morning shows that he's been as good a boy as he ever is, so he leers at her in the comfortable way of colleagues who know each other well. She's wearing his favourite blouse, the one that lost the top three buttons in a dry-cleaning accident that House wasn't involved in at all. He did tip the guy twenty bucks, though.

"Radiology called," are the first words out of Cuddy's mouth, and House amends "as good as ever" to "slightly naughty, but in an adorable ragamuffin way."

"Was Chase trying to find his soul in a head CT again?" he asks, putting on his concerned face. "I told him this insanity has to stop, but Foreman just encourages him. Says he could publish in a top neurology journal and then escape this hellhole. Any idea what he means by that?"

" _Four_ of Wilson's patients missed their abdominal scans," Cuddy says. She's wonderfully pissed off. House misses most of what she's saying and wonders instead if Cuddy has any mood that's not worth making worse just to see the look in her eyes when she tells him off. "When I asked him, he said he knew nothing about it."

"Six-month follow-ups for pancreatic cancer in remission," House says airily. He'd be upset that Wilson didn't back him up, except he remembers that he might not have let Wilson know that House changed his priorities for him sometime around five-thirty in the morning. Ah, well. Details. "My patient almost died twice last night," he says. "I win."

"They've had to reschedule the entire day's appointments." Cuddy manages to cram both incredulity and resignation into her voice. House is sure she appreciates his help in expanding her emotional range. "You threw the entire department into chaos."

House grins. His patient is still dying, but Cuddy always knows how to cheer him up. "Then my work there is done." He drops the kid's chart in front of Brenda and says, "X-rays."

Brenda glares at him. It's always nice to know she cares. "Any particular body part?" she snaps.

"A good magician never reveals his secrets," House says. "Take a wild guess. I'll be back later to grade your work." He peers at the clock on the wall and checks his watch. The clinic clock is obviously running twenty minutes slow. House tsks sadly at this evidence of lack of maintenance in a prominent Princeton teaching hospital. Personally, he blames the Dean of Medicine for shoddy administrative work.

Said Dean of Medicine follows him like a terrier as he heads out of the clinic. "Did monopolizing the CAT scan for the entire morning even tell you anything about what Mrs. Valeri has?" she asks.

"Yep," House says jauntily. He was able to squeeze three more symptoms out of that stunt. His scrawls on the whiteboard are starting to shape into patterns in his mind's eye. It's been a good day.

"Well, what was it?" Cuddy demands. House swings his cane faster, just for the pure enjoyment of watching her keep pace beside him.

"An allergy to the contrast dye," he says. "She coded again. Chase had his work cut out for him."

Cuddy looks up at the ceiling--House has tried following her gaze in the past, but he's never seen interesting there when he does--and asks, "Does patient care mean nothing to you?"

"Very little," House tosses over his shoulder, and ducks into the men's washroom. _Three, two, one_ , and Cuddy slams through the door after him. Perfect timing.

House leans back against the row of sinks, resting his weight on his good hip. An extra dose of Vicodin for every time his patient almost ruined the game of figuring out what she has, and House has been pleasantly pain-free for almost five hours. "Why, Cuddy," he says, "I didn't realize the reassignment surgery had progressed this far yet. Need any tips on the fine art of peeing standing up?"

"Not from you," she shoots back, with a pointed stare at his cane.

House lets his deep emotional pain show. It comes out as a pout. "I used the diagnostic imaging equipment for a diagnostic purpose," he says. Later, he plans to tell Cameron he suspected the allergy all along, and he made her administer the contrast agent to test his theory about Mrs. Valeri's kidney function. Depending on the degree of wobble in Cameron's lower lip, he'll follow that up with a "kidding!" smirk, or else something a little more evil. Right now he's leaning toward wondering out loud if an immunologist shouldn't have spotted the potentially life-threatening sensitivity before she started shooting people up with radioactive substances. It's been too long since he's made Cameron cry.

"House! Are you listening to me?"

"No," House says automatically.

Cuddy paces towards him. "The hospital equipment is not your playground," she says. House can't remember the last time he really sat back and watched her lecture him. His gofers will page him if Mrs. Valeri makes another downpayment on the farm, his clinic duty is over, and General Hospital doesn't start for two hours. And Cuddy's in the men's washroom, her eyes sparking with anger. It really has been a good day.

"But I'm having so much fun," he whines charmingly, making it perfectly clear that the fun he's having is mostly at her expense.

"You are not the only doctor in this hospital--"

"None of them are doing anything remotely interesting," House interrupts. If Cuddy gets mad enough, she might just leap on him in a sexual frenzy. He's seen it happen on The O.C., and he'll never stop hoping that real life will live up to television's promises.

"No. They're only doing what's _necessary_ ," Cuddy says, "instead of torturing their patients with tests that could kill them."

"You just like them better because they fill out paperwork and wait in line," House says. He pushes off the counter and makes for the door. He knows that she won't let this go so easily. Reaction, it's all about the reaction.

"Yes!" Cuddy shouts, following after him. "Because they aren't a risk to this entire hospital, House. Because they aren't threatening to have this place shut down with legal action."

"My patient might have died," House says, and grabs the door handle.

Cuddy reaches in front of him and slams the door shut in his face. "She almost did."

She's standing sideways to him, leaning forward so that she's pressed into his left hip. House can't help the way his body wants to twist toward her. He stares at her hand on the door and breathes in her closeness. She's using his refusal to back off to trap him.

"Send Cameron to do your damage control," she says quietly, in a voice like steel.

House opens his mouth, and Cuddy cuts him off: "No," she says. "She'll apologize, you won't make jokes, and I'll keep the Radiology staff from mass resignation."

He pauses, and then nods, just enough for her to see it. Cuddy studies him for a moment, probably trying to guess if he's serious. She's still furious, and House imagines pushing her into the door and kissing her until he can taste the anger in her lips and tongue and words. Cuddy would fight him with her whole body, enraged and delicious at once, but she would kiss him back, before pulling away and slapping him so hard it would leave a mark that would linger longer than the kiss. House is pretty sure it would be worth it to try.

But, _three, two, one_ , and Cuddy pulls the door open and slips out into the hallway.

House looks down and smiles to himself. Cuddy always wins. Some day, he'll catch the beat of their dance, and he'll say something before she does.

That day, his timing will be perfect, and it will be the best day ever.

 

 _when she said yes_

"No, no, Alexis will only get custody of Kristina if she gives Molly to Ric," House says. "You've really got to keep up. Just because I'm not always here to turn on the television for you is no excuse." He takes a bite of his sandwich--roast beef with watercress, but no mustard; Wilson really needs to get with the program. House has decided to keep stealing his lunch until he gets it right, and Wilson won't learn unless he figures that out for himself. He shifts his weight on the visitor's chair and extends his left leg a little, until it's resting more comfortably on the coma guy's pillow, which he stole for exactly that purpose. He's sure that if the coma guy had been awake, he would have been more than glad to share. After all, House very politely offered him his pickle.

Halfway into the show, just when things are getting interesting, Cuddy yanks the door open and storms in. "You. Clinic. Forty minutes ago."

House stretches luxuriously and brushes a few crumbs off his t-shirt. He thinks about answering--the impossibility of time machines comes to mind--but settles for humming a few bars of _Maneater_.

Cuddy pushes the door shut and crosses the room to stand between him and the TV. House leans his head sideways to see around her. "I know you get the clinic roster every week, since I give it to Cameron to deliver," she says.

House frowns and gives up on catching Sonny's plotting. He settles back in his chair and sighs thoughtfully. "Huh. Probably that's the same reason you don't get my memos about scheduling conflicts," he says. He waggles his eyebrows and says in his dirtiest voice, "I _know_ the problem's not on my end. Cameron loves taking my dictation."

"General Hospital is not a scheduling conflict," Cuddy says, throwing up her arms. "And your penis jokes are neither amusing or distracting. Get downstairs and start seeing patients before I have the janitors raid your office and confiscate all your toys."

"Wilson's toys are more fun anyway."

Cuddy smiles, unimpressed. "You hate all of Wilson's toys."

House narrows his eyes at her. Cuddy isn't supposed to know things like that. "Fine. Wilson's toys are more fun to break."

"And, once again, you would have no toys."

Changing the subject is the better part of valor. "I was in the clinic. The nurses kept barging in on me," House complains. He nods to the still form in the bed, who listens attentively and never preaches at him. "I needed some peace and quiet."

"It's hard to believe there's even one patient you actually appreciate--" Cuddy stops short and does a nifty double-take, staring at the life-support equipment. "Did you turn his _ventilator_ off?"

"Ohmigod, _did_ I?" House waves his hands frantically, fanning his face to calm his panic. "Do you think he died while I was sitting _right here_?"

Cuddy glares at him and turns the ventilator back on. The obnoxious wheeze blurs out the sound Lucky's whining monologue. Maybe there's an upside to having it on after all. "Are you insane? You deprived a coma patient of oxygen just so that you could hear the TV better?"

"Relax," House says, settling deeper into his chair and sulking a bit, mostly because it's fun to sulk. "His sats are still above ninety."

"No thanks to you." Cuddy's still bent over the machines, checking the settings, and House lets himself be distracted from his show long enough to appreciate the curve of her skirt over her ass. Because her reaction is always priceless, he lets her catch him in the act. She calls him childish with a look, and he answers with a silent invitation. She ignores him, but House smiles, because once again she's avoiding the question. She's never once said no.

Holding her gaze, he says, "There's no proof coma patients can't go for an hour without assisted ventilation."

Cuddy stands up again and rolls her eyes. "There's no proof that you ever took the Hippocratic Oath."

"I skimmed."

"Which begs the question of why I want you in the clinic at all--"

"Thank you," House says, wide-eyed and nodding, "I was beginning to think we'd _never_ see eye to eye on that important issue."

"But fortunately I like torturing you more than I hate dealing with your patient complaints file." Cuddy snatches the remote from the bedside table, but House lunges forward and gets a hand on it, quickly enough that he almost wrenches it back from Cuddy's evil control. They play tug-of-war until Cuddy lets go abruptly, letting House fall back. He knocks his funny bone on the armrest of his chair. He tries to massage the tingling out of his fingertips, cradling the remote to his chest, and he pouts, because that was supposed to happen the other way around.

Cuddy's taking some perverse pleasure in his injury, but at least she's given up for a moment on separating him from his soap. She turns to the TV screen, watches for a second (Tracy is plotting to destroy Luke), and says, "You have horrible taste."

House smirks. The board of directors sees Cuddy as the no-nonsense administrator, the talented fundraiser. Obviously the board hasn't been staring down her tops for as long as House has, because he knows that Cuddy is _fun_ , and all her brightly coloured silk and lace can't hide that. But then, the board has never seen Lisa Cuddy at an undergraduate beer blast. House can't help but feel sorry for anyone who hasn't.

"Oh, you know you watched Luke and Laura's wedding," he says. He waves to Wilson's usual chair. "They're at it again, by the way."

"Are you seriously suggesting that I sit here and watch soap operas with you?" Cuddy asks. She sounds scandalized, but she looks at Wilson's chair wistfully.

Interesting, he thinks, and says, "You deserve a break."

That seems to take the fight out of her, and she sighs. House looks at her silently. She's exasperated, but he can see the laughter that she's trying to push down. He likes the way she can't quite hide it. He likes the softer edges she sometimes shows in the middle of an argument, and more often than not that's what makes him lose in the end, because he's thinking about what it would be like if she let go of her control. He'd either be dead by now, or else it would go the other way, and she'd kiss him just to shut him up.

"I'm not Wilson," she says. "I'm not going to help you waste the hospital's time and money."

Cuddy, House muses, would be a pushy kisser, shoving at him until their bodies were lined up the way she liked. He can almost feel the slide of her hands up behind his neck to pull his head down. Her long nails would catch in the small hairs at the base of his skull, and the pinch would be just short of painful when she tightened her grip. Cuddy's impatient; House thinks she'd be the one to take his hand and move it to her breast, through the gape of her blouse, until his fingers scraped across the edge of her bra and slipped beneath. He's tried more than once to imagine the noise she'd make when he squeezed her nipple between his fingers, whether she would gasp or moan; the fact that he can't figure it out tugs at him and makes him want to kiss her just so that he can end the aggravation of not knowing.

House lifts his leg off the bed, and grabs his cane to lever himself upright. He's in a bad position, with Cuddy standing right in front of him, to be thinking happy thoughts about his boss.

When he stands up, though, Cuddy splays her fingers against his chest, pushing him back. House avoids stumbling by sitting down in the chair--a better move than falling, even if he is left looking up at her like a kid in the principal's office. "And I am not going to waste my time convincing you to do your job," she says. "You're going down there, you'll work your hours to the second, and--" She flubs the threat, probably because he's used up her usual stock, but House grins.

"Yes, ma'am," he says. Cuddy's left trying to figure out why he gave in, but he's got contrariness down to an art form. _Always forgive your enemies; it confuses the hell out of them_ \--it's good advice, but then, so is _Never let your enemies know they turn you on; they'll use it against you for the rest of your life._

House heads for the clinic, stays for the last five minutes before his hour is up, and then takes off from work early. He revs the bike's engine and drives home too fast to be safe, so that he can tell himself it's adrenaline that's making his pulse kick into overdrive. He's still trying to imagine the sound that Cuddy's breath will make against his mouth when he sneaks his hand between her legs. He can't.

He should probably be worried that he gets off to the memory of her ordering him back to work instead.

 

 _when she said thank you_

House leans back against Cuddy's office door, hands resting on his cane, his right leg bent slightly at the knee. He glances down the hall, over to the admit desk, and leans out from behind Cuddy's secretary's potted plastic plant to scope out the hospital's main doors. A nurse's aide stares at him as she walks by, and he winks at her. "Just checking," he assures her. She steps up her pace to get away from him.

When he's sure no one is watching, House rattles the door handle, then looks over his shoulder to see if anyone noticed. Brenda stares at him from the nurses' station, arms folded, face set into a look of death. "It's locked," House mouths at her, and then uses his outside voice to say, "Don't worry. All under control."

He slips the key out of his pocket (personal assistants are so careless these days, leaving things like office keys out where anyone rummaging through their briefcases can find them), unlocks the door, and almost trips over himself getting inside without calling attention to himself. He takes a moment to peer through the glass, waves to Brenda, and moves across to Cuddy's desk.

He taps his fingertips on the glass, something from the middle of _Für Elise_ , soothing and repetitive. He travels over every inch of the office with his eyes. The small traces of someone trying to hide something are everywhere. Cuddy has learned his habits, and her wastepaper basket is always scrupulously empty even of the boring stuff. House could spend hours spinning theories from the shade of lipstick on the rim of a styrofoam coffee cup or the crumbs that cling to a torn muffin wrapper. Instead he's left wondering where she dumps her garbage and how often she endures the janitors poking at her carefully organized piles of paperwork, just so he can't come in and weave patterns out of the way her sweater hangs on her chair or how her inbox was full this morning and now it's not.

House sits in her rolling chair and pushes himself into a spin. He stops when the chair's facing forward again, and presses the handle of his cane against his chin. He doesn't have long to wait before Cuddy appears. From beyond the doors, she tilts her head and stares at him in a way that asks, " _Must_ you?" and because he has no answer, he waits for her to come in and yell.

She pushes the door open, but she doesn't yell. House tries the chair-spin again, but this time his leg bumps the desk and he frowns at the quick shot of pain. Cuddy sits on the couch, about as far from him as she can get while still being in the same room, and buries her face in her hands. The way the couch is placed, no one passing by outside will be able to see her, and House wonders how often he's missed her broken moments because of that.

He outwaits her, and when Cuddy looks up, she says, "What the hell do you want, House?"

House stares at the ceiling, lifts up his cane, and balances it on one finger. He asks quietly, "Any luck?"

"You freaked out the entire clinic nursing staff in order to get me called in here, to ask me that?" She sounds normal, irritated and snappish. House relaxes slightly.

"My assessment of your burgeoning motherhood was obviously a little off-track," he admits. He lets his cane fall, catching it before it hits her desk, and rests it beside his chair again.

Cuddy looks up, and when he meets her eyes, he catches her without her usual armor of hospital business; she's letting him see too much. He moves his head, uncomfortable, but unable to escape.

He wants to take her by surprise, and kiss her as gently as he knows how. She's a puzzle he wants to figure out, and that takes time and patience and the soft application of touch. He wants to know what her mouth tastes like, and whether the scent of her perfume will seem different when he nuzzles into the hollow of warm skin just behind her ear.

House looks away again, but he doesn't leave. He's thinking of her bedroom, the well-matched precision of the furniture and the pillow slipcovers, and how much he wouldn't fit there. That doesn't stop him from wondering what it would be like to lay her down in a tangled mess of sheets, naked and looking at him like that. Since he's imagining, his leg isn't a problem, and he can kneel above her, tracing the line of her side with his fingers; watching her nipples harden and her stomach dip inwards as she draws in her breath.

He pictures his hands against her skin, and kissing her in strange places. The tip of her shoulder, the flare of her hip; the inside of her wrist, as he holds her hand, just to see if her heartbeat is as fast as his. She complains that his stubble scratches her, but she arches into his mouth when he reaches her inner thigh, high enough to make her shiver, not high enough to satisfy her.

He looks down and mutters, "I'm sorry." He stands up and heads for the door, leaning on his cane more than usual. The bum leg works to conceal any other reason he might have for not walking straight.

As he reaches the door, she says, "Thank you," with a puzzled look on her face, as if she might be talking to a pod person.

House shrugs irritably. "This is what you get for choosing donors based on Mozart instead of motility."

Cuddy smiles at that. "Don't you have a patient dying somewhere?"

"Two, actually."

She rolls her eyes. "Will wonders never cease."

He says, "Hmm,"and smiles a bit at his hand on the door handle. She doesn't say anything else, so he goes back to his office and insults Chase's hair, Cameron's morals, and Foreman's ability to read an MRI. It doesn't help, and he's left throwing peanuts off the second-floor balcony into any unattended coffee cups until Cuddy comes out of her office to shout at him to get back to the lab until he's cured every patient in his department.

He does, and feels better.

 

 _when she said please_

"New case," House announces, shouldering his way through the conference room door. He pitches the patient file onto the table, giving himself points for disrupting two newspapers, three medical journals, and a coffee cup, and deducting points because the cup was empty and now Chase isn't going to have to scramble to keep his khakis that boring shade of almost-gray. He twirls his cane around, salutes the mighty whiteboard, and then whirls on his fellows and says, "Suggestions?"

He gets three blank stares in return. Well, one blank, one deeply concerned, and one 'I can't believe I didn't take that job in California when I had the chance'. House blinks back at them, doing his own version of cluelessness. "I can't do all the work in this department," he says. "Come on, come on, differential, people."

Foreman's the first to give up the deadpan stare and go to the chart for the symptoms.

"Amazing deduction," House says, coating the praise in a nice thick layer of sarcasm. He waves at Chase and Cameron until they pick up their copies of the file. He can't believe he's held their hands for this long. It's time to send them out without training wheels.

There are three heads bent studiously over the patient's charts and House is feeling the pride of a true teacher when Cuddy bulldozes through the door and hits him with an industrial strength glare.

Foreman glances up and asks, "Lawsuit?"

Cuddy tenses up, and that's all the answer anyone needs.

Cameron says, "We were just--"

Cuddy cuts her short with a look. She points to his office and says, "Now, House."

House hesitates, tapping the marker against his palm, and then nods. He unhooks his cane from the whiteboard and frowns at his fellows. "You have theories, don't you?"

"Yeah," Chase says, "but you--"

House waves him off. "Then go. Test. Learn all the exciting new ways you can be wrong. Accept. Hug. Grow."

He limps into his office. He glances over his shoulder, watching Cuddy scaring off his underlings with her angry face. He's amazed that over the course of their working relationship, it hasn't frozen that way. He sits behind his desk and waits for her, already fed up with whichever of his recent batch of morons wants to hit up the hospital for emotional damages. He's thinking of establishing a sliding scale for his insults.

Cuddy's knuckles on the door handle are white as she pulls it shut behind her. "I don't even know how you managed to get named in the suit. You weren't even involved in the case. You were called for a consult."  
House nods, remembering. "Purple pustules. Nasty up close, but very interesting from a distance." It turned out to be actinomycosis, so his comments about cows and free love weren't completely out of line. If the lawyers get started, this will lead to depositions and court dates and eventually explaining himself to the licensing board.

It's much more fun to picture Cuddy losing it completely, dragging him to his Eames chair and straddling him, ripping his fly down, taking him in her hands and dragging pleasure out of him. He imagines her sinking down on him and fucking him until he's caught on a knife-edge between orgasm and pain. He thinks of leaving the blinds open and letting anyone passing by watch--

"Huh," he says. Anyone watching. Slander suit. He frowns at Cuddy, still somewhat pissed off. "Lawyers fix problems."

"Apologies fix problems without attorney fees," Cuddy says.

"Why are they doing this?" he asks, frowning. The guy was falling over himself to thank them for figuring out what he had and curing him. "Slander suit?" he asks. "No emotional damages?"

"Please," Cuddy says, "just fix it. These people are not Rubik's cubes, you don't need to figure them out."

"I already have," he says, but she's already walking out. "He really does love cows," he calls after her. She ignores him, and he gives up on trying to convince her he's in the right.

He's pretty sure she doesn't want to know about his thought process.

 

 _when she said sorry_

House leans back on the balcony wall, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight on the back of his head and the vague whirling numbness in his body. Wilson's beside him, on the other side of the wall, popping wasabi peas into his mouth and crunching down on them in companionable silence. It's spring, and House's fancies have turned to the potential havoc he could wreak with an arsenal of water balloons. He's grinning, thinking about the chaos and different ways to humiliate Chase with latex, when the door from his office opens and Cuddy steps out.

House nudges Wilson. "She's found a way to resist the melting power of natural light!" he hisses. "Where are my stakes?"

Cuddy heaves a disgusted sigh. "What the hell are you two doing out here?"

"Nothing," House denies quickly, with all the false innocence of the justly accused.

Cuddy gazes at him for a moment, then dismisses him. "Wilson?"

Wilson smiles sheepishly and lifts a shoulder. "Actually...nothing," he says.

House digs his elbow into Wilson's ribs. "Spoilsport," he says. They could have kept her guessing for hours about what kind of pranks they were planning, and still not left her entirely reassured at the end of the day, if only Wilson didn't lie like an altar boy. On the other hand, this might actually work out better for his plan to bombard the parking lot with ice-water death from above. Since Cuddy hasn't directly forbidden water balloons, he's going to assume she endorses them. He only hopes she hasn't recently developed the power to read minds.

"Hmm, and here I thought I hired department heads to get work done," Cuddy says in mock confusion. "It makes complete sense for them to be doing nothing in the middle of a work day."

" _I_ was just enjoying the Mae West revival you're staging in your sweater," House says.

"And I was just going," Wilson says, holding up his hands to show that he has nothing to do with anything that comes out of House's mouth.

"Coward," House shouts after him.

"Misanthrope," Wilson calls back.

"You're going to hurt my feelings one of these days, Jimmy!"

Wilson opens the door on his side of the balcony. He shakes his head and says, "Let me know when, I'll alert the newspapers." The door closes behind him and House rolls his head back, grinning slightly, to watch him sit down at his desk. Wilson slumps in front of his paperwork like a truant schoolkid with a week's detention.

Cuddy crosses her arms to get his attention. It's a very effective technique. The sweater she's wearing really is a miracle in cotton form. "And I suppose you have no patients. Again."

"They don't infect 'em like they used to," House says comfortably. "Don't worry, I donated my flying monkeys to the noble cause of curing the common cold. What else do you need?" He raises his eyebrows suggestively. "I could clear my afternoon for you."

"I'd hate to interrupt your busy schedule of doing nothing," Cuddy says.

"Bad leg," House says, tapping his cane against his right sneaker. "They've taken me off the racing circuit. Apparently all I'm good for these days is--"

"Glue?" Cuddy suggests.

House stops to consider it. "Kinkier than I normally get, but if that's your thing..."

"Trust me," Cuddy says, "you couldn't handle my thing."

She looks like she regrets it the instant the words leave her mouth, and House is delighted. "You don't know until you let me try," he says. "There wasn't anything when Chase and I--" He stops and snaps his fingers. "The bedside drawer. How could I have missed that?"

"You are not going to break into my house again," Cuddy snaps.

"Not without medical cause," he agrees instantly, since she's just confirmed the location of everything he wants to know about her. "Are you sure you're feeling okay? Any fever?"

"Fine," she says. "You do realize you have a year's worth of charting to catch up on?"

"Where's the fun in catching up?" he asks. "Then the game's over."

"Finishing is far more satisfying than delaying the inevitable," Cuddy says, with a very evil smile.

House's eyes widen. "Why, Cuddy, are you promising me a reward if I get through my paperwork?"

"Only if I don't see Cameron forging your signature anymore."

"You could reward us both. Simultaneously."

"That's far more reward than _you're_ worth, no matter how much charting you finish."

"You could reward Cameron and let me watch."

"I _was_ thinking of giving her a better parking space, since she's done so well at putting up with you. Watching her park ahead of you would do you good."

"But it wouldn't help my team bond," he says. He's only half-aware what he's saying; the world is pleasantly far away, and he feels warmer than the sun accounts for. Doesn't matter. Cuddy's shaking her head at him, more fond than irritated, and he doesn't know how to make her stay. She's already stepped back to the doorway, ready to give up on him again.

He grins and wonders how many times he can make her come to his office to play with him today. She doesn't have any real reason to be here. He doesn't have clinic hours, the three amigos are scouring the recent admissions for a case that might pique his interest, and Wilson's already back at work. Balloons might be a first step, and he glances over his shoulder at the patients and their families walking back and forth on the sidewalk below. One or two really well-timed drops should be all it takes. It's spring, and House feels good--that could be the Vicodin talking, since he downed two just to bother Wilson when he asked after his leg again--and he's high enough to think, _I could kiss her_ , and not remember until it was too late how easily she would chew him up and spit out the pieces.

That doesn't matter; it never has. He wants her anyway.

Cuddy stares at him as if she knows exactly what he's thinking. "Hand in your charts by five o'clock, and we'll talk. And, House?" Cuddy tips her head to the side, leaning against the door jamb. "Don't even think about water balloons."

She walks through his office, back to the hallway, and House watches her go, stupidly turned on and chuckling under his breath.

After she's gone, the sun's just as warm, but Wilson hunches his shoulders against House's barrage of pebbles against his window and stays inside. House pulls his Ipod out of his jacket pocket and stuffs the earbuds in, and runs his thumb over the dial until he finds Mick Jagger wailing about how he can't always get what he wants.

House turns the volume up, and smiles.


End file.
